[Mike_Young]

In reading the old club vs. new club thread there is mention of a newer membership wishing to remove the "old photos" from the bar area. This is just an instance of whhat is happening.
IMHO the massive clubhouses we see today along with their overhead are helping to hold back the growth of the game.  As is often said there are many good players that are not golfers and there are many weaker players that are golfers.  These clubhouses seem lean to towards taking more established clubs toward more of a social atomosphere where golfers take a back seat..
For example: our clubhouse is 59000 sq ft on a 1925 Ross course.
Today they will tell the membership that golf is not the driving force and that the demographics have changed.  This clubhouse is a 1990 clubhouse.  And golf does take a backseat because the board is scared to death of the monster.  The staff it requires as well as maintenance has made it where we just took another 100 members.  The members in control see newer resorts and come back thinking we have to have those amenitiies and , look out......we go for them.
It seems to be that in many cases the size of the clubhouse is adversely proportionate to the quality of the golf.  Seems all the good courses have old carpet and metal lockers.  While there are exceptions, IMHO we have let it get out of hand.

[Bob_Huntley]

New ones and additions to old ones, YES.

[Mike_Sweeney]

I know a formerly private club in CT, not a brand name course but a decent course, where the owner took it public as the membership basically could not support the clubhouse overhead.

He took the club public (was private), then he built out the club house for catering events and doubled his revenues. He also had fistfights on the 1st tee for a year or two between the old members and the public players.  

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Mike, I do agree. Please give me a pro shop with a starter's hut by the first tee. Please have a mens locker room with good showers and a bar overlooking the course with a small kitchen that serves basic good food. I might go nuts and have a halfway house with sandwiches and a hut by the practice area to get a drink at. I do not think I am over 10,000 square feet of total roofed facility

[Joel_Stewart]

I'll take the opposite side and say NO.   I read someplace recently that their are golfers and then people that play golf.

I'll take it a step further and say there are "golf courses" and then there are places to play golf or at least hit a golf ball.

Within this framework, certain housing communities, resorts or recreation areas, have built ostentatious clubhouses.  Are they part of the game, no not really.  Are they part of the experience, yes.

[cary lichtenstein]

I think everyone on CGA is in the minority, including me on this issue. The community I live in just renovated our clubhouse to the tune of $18 million dollars.

Basically, they increased the dining facilities and everyone is just thrilled. Why I don't know, since we can only fill it 4 days a year.

I wanted to get something for the driving range for $3500, and there is "no money in the budget". It's like hitting your head against a brick wall.

[BCrosby]

It is outrageous how much money is spent to build under-used clubhouses. By comparison, it is equally outrageous how little money is spent on the single most important asset of the club - the golf course.

My club has, literally, acres of dining space that is filled only when rented for weddings or corporate outings. It stands empty at all other times.

When clubs allocate capital this way, they are forgetting that other clubs/restarants/resorts can easily compete with them on dining facilites. Their compettion can't compete with them when it comes to their golf course. Yet that asset gets remarkably little attention.

I too am baffled. Sooner or later it will backfire. Bad capital allocation decisions always do.

Bob

[michael j fay]

IMHO

Golf and food should be separated forever. The best house service I have ver seen is Newport CC which has an onsite caterer to make sandwiches. There is a bar and bartender but that's it.

The restaurant end of most Country Clubs is a black hole, oft covered over the years by self deceptive accounting. In the long run, however, the restaurant will wear down the Club.

In some places they are realisitic enough to understand the losses and build them into the budget, they essentially care only that the membership is served and that is what the membership wants as well.

In most other places the Club is running a white tablecloth restaurant five nights a week with a potential clientele of 250-1,000 people. This is ludicrous. Unless the Club is a town center Club and has a huge daily lunch business the losses can be staggering.

I think that a lot of Clubs limp along supporting an unecessary food service and for no good reason. Country Club food is essentially generic and rather expensive. After eating in some 500 or so Country Clubs over the past 20 years I can report that with a few notable exceptions the food has been very average. Unfiortunately, most of the notable exceptions are in the negative. There have been very good meals in a very few places.

Clubs do not belong in the food business for the most part and would do well to plan a graceful exit.

[Mike_Young]

Michael,
I could not have said it better.
However, I expect it to continue.  Why???  Most club managers today are food and beverage guys.  They are very good at what they do and because of their position they have the ear of the boards and in most cases are over the golf pro.  If you have ever been to a Club Managers Assoc of America meeting you would see how good of a job they  have done of promoting themselves.  
It is amazing to listen to intelligent board members quote how food service makes money and how we need to spend so much capital on the clubhouse bbecause the new demographics demand such.
Until the PGA gets itself in a position to compete with CMAA it will not have the ear of the boards and it will continue.

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

When I joined my club I was a neophyte at the club membership thing and I remember at first being kind of bummed that you couldnt get dinner at the club.  The grill closes at about 4pm, after that you can get all the drinks you want and snack food, but the grill is closed.

The more I learned the more I thought this place has it right.  You can get a burger (and a darned good one too) or sandwich during the day, but there isnt any fancy place to sit down for a meal.  Although Deborah does make some good cheese grits and breakfast plates in the morning.  The grill/bar (yes it is only one multipurpose place) overlooks the valley (9 & 18).  The locker room is nice but not very big, and all the money is put into the golf course just the way it ought to be.  It may not blow you away with poshness, but the golf will get your attention.  

So it is good to know that they still are building new clubs using that formula some places.

The secondary added benefit of this that I think is overlooked on the surface is the quality of member that a club like that attracts are real golfers.  If you want to belong to a club to be seen, you will go somewhere else.  You belong to a club like that because you love the golf.  It always amazes me howmany members we have that also belong at the two money clubs (one old and one new), they belong there because you have to be to be in the proper social circle for doing business, but they play their golf at Musgrove because that is where they would rather be when it is about the golf and comraderie.

[ForkaB]

Daryl

"Cheese Grits"?

Please elaborate.

Rich

[john_stiles]

My experience .........we closed down the kitchen years ago. Every town has too many decent restaurants nearby.

The club manager where I belong is in charge of two things...keeping food service up to 'par' and getting outside events (weddings, parties, etc.) for the clubhouse. Food for outside events is catered.   Even then, clubhouse is a break even proposition.

I think most clubs, outside the large metro areas, are going to the 'grill' idea more and more,  serving a limited breakfast and good sandwiches and grilled items.

In Knoxville Tennessee (and I would guess most of the south) the first step in the demise of country club 'food' involved liquor.  Liquor by the drink was not available in many areas of the south until 1970s or later. You wanted a drink with supper....... you went to a 'club' or to the 'country club'.  There was a bit of a captive audience.

Then, in our case,  the city wanted a big hotel downtown. Hyatt said they would build but only if they got liquor by the drink. They got liquor by the drink.  So did all the other restaurants.  That was the beginning of the end for food service at clubs that couldn't afford to lose money that the others reference.

The two clubs in town that do have 'supper' service survive on two words ....  outside events.  You have the Rotary for lunch, the womens' garden club for lunch, the symphony league for supper, the wedding for Billie Sue, Bobby's retirement party from Meth Labs Inc., etc., etc.

Club manager has to fill the clubhouse with outside events.

[michael j fay]

Grits are a southern excuse for getting rid of excess corn meal. They are esentially tasteless but when mixed with cheese they become sticky and make great wallpaper paste.

[Brian_Gracely]

Daryl

"Cheese Grits"?

Please elaborate.

Rich

Rich,

Grits are sort of like the Southern (US) equivalent to Haggis in Scotland.  While some people try and explain what the ingredients are, most people won't believe them and are fearful of trying them.  And like Haggis, preparation of grits varies from kitchen to kitchen and Waffle House to Waffle House.  

"Cheese Grits" is grits + cheese.  As a carpetbagging Yankee, I'm still not exactly sure what a grit is, but I do know that it falls into the same category as most authentic Southern food in that it can not be eaten without adding enormous amounts of sweetening "stuff".

[michael j fay]

Let me elaborate on Country Club food.

It comes in big boxes marked Country Club Food, any side up. Once it is taken into the kitchen at the average Country Club it is opened by the help. Anything that looks tasty is filched by the dishwasher. All the other is boiled together for hours to get an unappetizing consistancy and absolutely no taste.

Seriously, I have served on two House Committees. When reviewing the financials at both places I asked where the General Managers salary was in the mix. I was told it was an administrative expense written against the dues. The assistant managers salary was allocated in the same fashion.

Here is the real story: Anyone that works at the Club, who is not on the greens crew or in the pro shop is part of the Food and Beverage routine. The possible exception is the shoe shine guy.

Many Clubs with the aid of CC accounting firms will hide in administration the salaries of as many they can. It makes the food and beverage operation look better and therefore the Club officers. This allows the food and beverage operation to continue to drag down the Club financially.

Wampanoag was the victim of many grandiose schemes over the years. The Officers spent money the did not have hoping the economy would bail them out. The hiccup in the late '80's finally caught up with them. Fact is: They could have survived the stupidity and grandiose schemes if the kitchen had not dragged them down over the years.

In 1994 I tracked the performance of the food and beverage operation at Wampanoag fro 1962. I used my own accounting which included those that are in the food and beverage end of things. The chart was a straight line from a loss of $ 28,000 in 1962 to a loss of over $ 425,000 in 1993.

I approached the then President with my numbers and was told that he had a different plan to tuen the operation around. In 1994 they lost $ 435,000. Accumulation of the losses from 1984 through 1994 added nearly $ 2.5MM in debt to the Club, proving that the Officers not only could not run a successful F&B operation, but did not have the balls to admit it. They borrowed short term to cover the losses instead of assessng te members.

My idea is to assess the membership the losses of the F&B semi-annually. Include the salaries of those involved in F&B. This brings the members to a point of understanding what is really going on.

Go to nearly any Club at the end of the "minimum" and you will find a packed Club eating and straining the efforts of the staff. Go back a week later and you will find an empty dining room, six waitress, a full kitchen staff and a well fed dishwasher.

[Brad Klein]

Mike, as I recall, there was a minority report by the Wampanoag House Committee for the clubhouse that included allocations for a blowtorch, dynamite and a wrecking ball.

[A_Clay_Man]

A real answer this question is about to happen and we can witness "how" a clubhouse effects golf. Yes folks, I'm talking about the demure den of Pacific Grove.

Will a $3 million dollar new clubhouse improve the golf in any way?

And for that 3 mil, I'd bet there's not one design element that is forward in thinking. Especially with all the recent realities that have hit most courses, PG's bulletproof vest, will be taking quite the thining.

[RJ_Daley]

While my home course is a municipal owned and operated facility, what we have done might bear some merit for even private clubs to consider (although tax and organizational restrictions might curtail this approach).

Our county recently spent the money to tear down what was a fairly comfortable CH with good size grill room and seperate pro shop, to build a very nice brick structure, considerably larger in pro shop and almost triple the F&B space with full modern kitchen facility and an extra small 60-75 capacity dual purpose regular dining room run-over or private party-banquet room.  Then, they took bids for the F&B operation.  The leasee pays a certain percentage to the county for rent.  The kitchen equipment and dining room and bar fixtures are owned by the county.  The operator-leasee is a local restaurantuer who runs another nice establishment and has a local reputation and following.  The F&B is open to the public, yet tends to be dominated by golfers who have their spouses join them for dinners after rounds or on non-golf days. There is a big veranda for cards, and porch 19th hole sessions have become a wonderful addition to our atmosphere.

The bottom line is farming out the risk of the F&B to an entreprenuer.  But, the "privacy" or "exclusivity" of the club concept must suffer.  

MJ Fay, you obviously are very wise in these matters.  Do you think the farming out of F&B is viable in the (some) private club organizational structures?  I guess to some extent private club members by definition are folks with a good amount of disposable income or assets that allows them to join clubs matching their particular level of their financial abilities in the first place.  Thus, they are adept at finding ways to "dispose" of that $$$.  Itr always amazes me how fast that $$$ can disappear if a membership has a collective mind set to spend it.

[Mike_Sweeney]

The other side of the coin is in Ireland where some courses had problems attracting overseas golfers (especially the tour buses) until they either built or rebuilt their clubhouses. People did not take the course seriously if they had a beat up old clubhouse, including Ballybunion.

[Ken_Cotner]

Daryl

"Cheese Grits"?

Please elaborate.

Rich

Rich,

Rent "My Cousin Vinny" for the single greatest grits-centered scene in film history (despite the lame stereotype of the dimwitted redneck on the witness stand).  Cheese grits are not mentioned, but you get the idea...

Best,
Ken

[ForkaB]

Brian, Ken, et. al.

I didn''t live for 44 years in the USA without knowing what grits were, and even eating them once or twice.  It's the "cheese" bit that puzzles me.  Kinda like haggis a la mode...........

[cary lichtenstein]

Mike Young:

How right you are. Our former club manager was a member of the club managers association, and sold the board on the fact that our club was awarded a "top 100 club award from the club managers association", and there is a plaque in the entry way to this effect.

I tried to tell everyone that is not like golf digest making you a top 100 course, it is a search firm awarding the guys they move around from one club to another, a top 100 status.

It is akin to being awarded a "top 100 gas station in Miami", which everyone would laugh at, but these club managers stroke the board members, tell them how smart they are, and then get away with murder.

We had $100,000 surplus this past year which our board is very proud of, excluding depreciation. I guess that depreciation is not a real number, until you assess all the members for the next renovation because there is no money in the capital account.

These boards will spend upteen millions on clubhouses, but turn down every good idea to improve the maintenance and appearance of the golf course for mininal dollars.

[Steve Wilson]

Rich

Wouldn't that be haggis au gratin?

[michael j fay]

RJ Daley:

I wholeheartedly support leasing out the F&B facility. We had one at Wamp for two years and damned near broke 'em.

MJFay

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

Daryl

"Cheese Grits"?

Please elaborate.

Rich

Obviously since you know what grits are you know that unlike most Yankees who think they look like oatmeal and try to put sugar on them, they are actually corn and you put butter and salt and pepper on them.

Having said that I an a recent convert to the south, I have grown to appreciate grits.  Well at Musgrove Mill (especially on tournament mornings) our cook Deborah will whip up a batch of Cheese Grits, which as has been mentioned is grits mixed with cheese.  And they are tasty.

I guess you might have to just experience them first hand.

Sorry it took me so long to see your question.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()